Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/121

quence is, that he utters the same sounds in connection with their presence. All this takes place, very naturally, under the common law of association. But neither association, nor the principle of imitation, nor any conceivable modification of the law of cause and effect, will account for the child's use of the word "I." In originating and using this term, he reverses, or runs counter to all these laws, and more particularly performs a process diametrically opposed to any act of imitation. Take an illustration of this: A child hears another person call a certain object "a table;" well, the power of imitation naturally leads him to call the same thing, and any similar thing, "a table." Suppose, next, that the child hears this person apply to himself the word "I:" In this case, too, the power of imitation would naturally (that is to say, letting it operate here in the same way as it did in the case of the table) lead the child to call that man "I." But is this what the child does? No. As soon as he becomes conscious, he ceases, so far at least as the word "I" is concerned, to be an imitator. He still applies the word "table" to the objects to which other people apply that term; and in this he imitates them. But with regard to the word "I," he applies this expression to a thing totally different from that which he hears all other people applying it to. They apply it to themselves, but he does not apply it to them, but to himself; and in this he is not an imitator, but the absolute originator of a new notion, upon which he now, and henceforth, takes up